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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Really I am not sure what is happening to me. I am kind of falling apart.

For days in angst, torturing myself inwardly, trying to get myself to paint (show is in just over 2 weeks now), meditating, etc., and then today it was attack the damn canvas time. So I did. With permanent inks, oils, and so on. Hours of struggle bending over the painting, doing this, that. It's too pretty, no, now it is far less pretty and simply over-worked. Or maybe it's ok. I simply can't stand this state of mind. Tomorrow hopefully more work on it, at least re-doing the lettering of the poem, which got kind of mussed in this afternoon's trauma, the face, the arms, the shawl, the background, whatever I can do for the magic.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

I must be running a temperature! This is so not like my normal style. A poem fragment will be written into this when it's closer to finished. Probably into the white spaces in the towel. Don't think I'll do much but darken the torso when the paint is dry. I'm kind of liking the simplicity here. 'Untitled4,' 1st wash, nighttime shot (colours are a bit brighter than they appear here), 2013. 24" x 30", oil on stretched canvas.

As ever, the colour has faded out as the painting dries. So that has to be worked on. Probably, because of the poem fragment that I chose (from my Suite of Botticelli Venus Poems), which I had forgotten about but which my 'text edit' file reminded me of this morning, she will have to remain quite whitish, almost transparent.

Painting is like dreaming. You dream without really knowing where the images come from, or how they are created by your mind. Likewise with painting - you know you're doing it, but you don't often know what it's about while you are doing it. The painting arises as if from a dream.

I am only now dimly aware of what I am doing with this painting. It's too pretty. But then again, it is a kind of Circe image of the Botticelli Venus type, and that's not pretty at all.

Friday, April 26, 2013

This is the 2nd poempainting. It is most challenging. Doing the drawing took nigh of a day, and I rubbed out so much I gessoed in the figure and painted ochre into the surrounding before gessoing that. It has sat propped on the floor for days. Pressure and deadlines drove me to throw it on the floor and begin painting this evening. While it is only the first wash, that does set the direction of the painting. I hope as I continue to work on it over the next few days, I like what emerges better than I do presently.

I sat with the drawn canvas all day, didn't go out into the sunshine, didn't eat, refused to do anything until I painted, finally did early evening, actually enjoyed the brushstrokes at the beginning, painting is usually torment for me, an inner struggle, such terrible intensity mingled with insecurity that only finally finishing brings exhausted relief, but painting this was light and fun, until I began to see what I was doing, oh, I can't stand this painting, anaemic and whispy, everything I don't want this series to be, and so I must drag myself back to the canvas and throw dark passion into the paint. And if it doesn't produce something I can live with, into the dank dungeon of the basement with ye, canvas!

If this painting had stayed the way it was when first painted, I wouldn't have touched it. But it faded out as it dried. It's still wet here - I finished it at 11pm last night - but the colour is much stronger.

Among other thoughts and associations, we are approaching Spring and she's my tulip lady.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

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John left this message last February after he had read the manuscript and before he sent a small blurb. I've clearly edited this little clip. At the end I think he's saying something about 'the personal,' that despite the science and metaphysics these prose poems are lyrical and intimate.

What he ultimately sent, and which is in the book: ‘Brenda Clews offers us a pellucid voice that presents and interprets so clearly, it is almost as if light is shining through each one of the magnificent images in these mysterious poems.’
I've dedicated the book to him, along with a number of other beloved and inspiring people:

"for John Walter, his light, inspiring and guiding,
and for Luigi Bianchi, a ‘Professor of light,’ and for
Jeff, who re-appeared when I was writing these
poems and became a part of them, and, always, for
my two children, Adrian and Kyra, their resilience
and support, and for Luciano Iacobelli, with thanks"

Sunday, April 21, 2013

You wouldn't think that so many brushes would be necessary to such a simple painting, huh?! Crazy how many get used. I intend to write part of a poem into this painting, so it's not finished. Also, this is all washes, and yet, and yet... it kind of works. What I don't want is to overwork it. 'Untitled,' 2nd wash, 24" x 30", oils on stretched canvas (daylight shot, colours good).

Poem fragment (from my book, still a manuscript with an excellent publisher currently considering it):

Do we fall into what dissembles us?A whirlpool, its swirling torpor,undressing us,naked against the onrush.Is it that we are always approaching what we can never give ourselves to?

2nd wash, 24" x 30", oils on stretched canvas (nighttime shot, not so good for whiteness or colour)

A man and a woman are sweeping the grass in the park. He with a broom; she with a whisk broom and dustpan. They are slowly filling a garbage bag. Who are they? Kindly, concerned neighbours? On a Sunday? But, why sweep the grass?

Following my meandering dog, I make my way over to say hi, and to joking ask, after remarking that the weather today is wonderful after that snow squall and heavy north wind of yesterday, "Why are you sweeping the grass?"

She says, squatting, filling her dust pan, "Cigarette butts."

"My goodness," I say, looking around. "The grass is filled with butts." And then a speel, "I hate how people throw live butts. My dog has almost stepped on lit cigarettes a few times, I really have to watch. And my neighbours threw a lit butt a few summers ago over the fence into dried sticks and leaves - we were in a drought." (I didn't say that that day I yelled back over the fence, 'Please put your butts out first - that hit dried sticks here, and good thing I was here to put it out for you.' And that the people in that backyard behind the very high very enclosed fence didn't say a word but went inside immediately.)

"Community work," she says. "We have to do so many hours cleaning cigarette butts in all the parks. There's people doing this all over the city."

"Wow. Well, it's healthy and good, and hope you're not too sore tomorrow!" (She is squat walking sweeping close to the ground.)

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Beginning to think that plain pencil works best for these short sketches of poets that I find myself doing - I now take art supplies since even though I think I'd like to sit and enjoy the readings with a glass of wine, I always end up grabbing a pencil or pen because something interesting happens, a costumed reader, or the challenge of drawing a performing poet like Brandon Pitts... This is the 3rd time I've tried to draw him... and I wasn't going to. I only had my writing Moleskine notebook with me, determined to either write or simply listen. Ha! Let's start with that shape of head and shoulder (which I didn't get - after I'd finished his face and came back to the particular slope of suited shoulder, he'd finished and had sat down). He has a very distinctive face, especially his dark eyes, and yet his features are, well, he is good looking, nothing too accentuated that would make it easier to offer enough of a 'recognizable' visual notation for someone to say, 'Yeah, that's Brandon.' I never take reference photos, btw. Never. What you see is what you get, and if I tinker later, it's from memory. Anyhow... sharing Sunday night's sketch. Brandon Pitts at Lizzie Violet's Cabaret Noir at Q Space in Toronto on 14 Apr 2013. 6" x 7", graphite, Moleskine notebook.

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Rishma Dunlop, a poetry reading sketch at the Art Bar at Q Space on April 2, 2013. 4" x 6", Aquarelle graphite on 130lb archival art paper. This drawing was done with a water-soluble 6B pencil, and so can be wetted and then it will change, and may lose the likeness here, so I thought to post the original sketch before seeing what a wet paintbrush produces.

(Unfortunately, once again, I forgot my 'distance/close-up' glasses, and so she was fuzzy in the distance and likely the likeness is too. Lol.)

Rishma was on my thesis committee for a thesis I didn't finish at York U about a decade ago. She's a fabulous poet, essayist, literary editor and teacher. I bought her book, 'Lover Through Departure,' and look forward to reading the poems. It was wonderful to see her again.

Monday, April 01, 2013

Charcoal sketch of Gabrielle B. [it is nigh impossible to find images of her on the NET, and she's a published author, and so I think that is a deliberate choice, and therefore naming her is not, I suspect, apropos] at Nik Beat's HOWL at Q Space on March 24th, 2013. To the left, the untouched original sketch done there, and, to the right, finished in various colours of conte. I had to rely entirely on memory for the colour, which perhaps I oughtn't to have done since to my eye the finished drawing loses the spontaneity of the sketch, but I wanted to attempt the rich skin tones. 8.5" x 11", 130lb archival art paper.

She has edited textbooks, written articles for newspapers, taught yoga, done temporary office work, and dog sitting, while maintaining a reclusive lifestyle of writing and painting. She has a degree in Fine Arts and abandoned a PhD in English Lit many years ago.

Brenda has had solo art shows at York University (2000), Q Space (2013) and Urban Gallery (2014), and been in a number of group art shows including 'Birthtales' (1992) at A Space, 'Birth2' (2004) at Ayer Lofts in the US, '5 By 5' (2013) at The Gladstone Hotel, and forthcoming at Bampot and Yellow House Gallery (2014). Her artwork has appeared in 'Addiction to Perfection' and as two journal covers and in a poster for ‘ARM Magazine.’

Her poetry has been published in print journals, 'Tessera,' 'ARM Journal' and 'Labour of Love,' and on-line at 'SaucyVox,' 'Qarrtsiluni,' 'Mothers Movement Online,' and 'The Browsing Corner.' She presented papers yearly at conferences at York University and OISE on the maternal body from 2001-2006. Her video poetry has been featured at 'Moving Poems.'

LyricalMyrical Press published her chapbook, 'the luminist poems' in 2013. She has a full-length collection of poetry, 'Tidal Fury,' forthcoming with Guernica Editions. She hosts monthly Poetry Salons with 2-3 featured poets and open mic at Urban Gallery in Toronto.

She cites her early years spent barefoot, living in a compound of mud huts, with many wild animals and the wonderful Ndembu people, in the jungle of Kafue National Park in Zambia, for her deep resonance with the beauty, strangeness and brilliance of the tribal mind and the natural world.

She is a multi-media artist whose approach to a topic may include poetry, painting, theory, dance, recordings, and video. Brenda's oeuvre focuses on the plethora, the multiple callings, the obsessive muse, the prism rather than the spotlight, or on multiple spotlights. She writes, "Where else do you flee? How do you combine yourself?"